Corrosion in the marine environment is a complex and expensive form of damage. It is commonly studied by the deployment of coupons that reflect the marine corrosion a structure will experience, thus allowing design and maintenance prevention strategies to be developed accordingly. This study stems from the lack of information in the literature regarding the profiling of corrosion with respect to marine depth in the North Sea where important wind farm developments have been undertaken. To address such issue a field experiment has been designed and carried out in the vicinity of the Westermost Rough Windfarm in the North Sea. The field experiment consists of deploying steel S355 coupons below the tidal area and capturing the effects of corrosion, the mass loss from which the corrosion rate is derived and the chemical products that makes up the rust with water depth. The study involves proper planning and logistics to ensure that the field experiment survives the rough conditions of the North Sea for a duration of 111 days. A high corrosion rate of 0.83 mm/year has been observed in this experiment. This paper goes into the details of the deployment blueprint employed and the analyses of the coupons to provide a conclusive observation and modelling of corrosion with respect to water depth under free or open sea water corrosion condition.
Corrosion in the marine environment is a complex mechanism. One of the most damaging forms of corrosion is pitting corrosion, which is difficult to design and inspect against. In the North Sea, multiple offshore wind structures have been deployed that are corroding from the inside out. One of the most notable corrosion mechanisms observed is pitting corrosion. This study addresses the lack of information both in the literature and the industry standards on the pitting corrosion profile for water depth from coupons deployed in the North Sea. Image processing was therefore conducted to extract the characteristics of the pit, which were defined as pit major length, minor length, area, aspect ratio, and count. The pit depth was measured using a pit gauge and the maximum pit depth was found to be 1.05 mm over 111 days of exposure. The goal of this paper is to provide both deterministic models and a statistical model of pit characteristics for water depth that can be used by wind farm operators and researchers to inform and simulate pits on structures based on the results of a real field experiment. As such, these models highlight the importance of adequate corrosion protection.
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